


Lash Out

by ihadeatenhername



Category: Tiny Meat Gang (Band)
Genre: Gen, but i'm glad i wrote it, fair warning it's pretty emotionally intense, this one was a pain in the heart to write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 04:01:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21130424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ihadeatenhername/pseuds/ihadeatenhername
Summary: Pressure likes to build and pressure likes to burst. And Cody and Noel, the good friends that they are, have been letting their pressures build for a very long time. Time for them to lash out.





	Lash Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angelbi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelbi/gifts).

> You can thank Meghan (@tacotuesdaygirl) for the idea and fucking crazy amazing encouragement/support.
> 
> You can also thank Kate (@codykold) for helping me with revision and brainstorming.
> 
> Love you all <3

That day was something different for them both.

They were each sitting on different couches in the green room, waiting for their cue to head out to the stage. Noel had looked up, seeing Cody rubbing his face and eyes with his hand for what he counted to be the tenth time that day, and said, “Man, I’m glad I don’t drink. Otherwise, the Tiny Meat Gang would just be two alcoholics fighting hangovers onstage all show.” Cody laughed to give Noel the impression that the joke had landed, but on the inside, the words dug in with claws and failed to release their grip.

In thoughtless reaction, Cody said, “Hey man, at least I actually quit smoking weed when it started to fuck me up, instead of just always saying I was going to.” He laughed at his own “joke,” and Noel did too, but both sounds were flat, glaringly inauthentic. Both seemed to want to avoid the discomfort, and it took Noel less than ten seconds to find something to watch on Twitter to have them laughing normally again.

The show went well that night. Their dynamic was as easy as ever, as though the strange moment in the green room had never happened. Afterward, they piled back on the bus, and did their own things for a while before meeting up in the back of the bus to work on music, as they’d been doing for the past few nights.

Noel was writing lyrics on his phone and Cody was trying to modify the length of a sound within the beat, when out of nowhere, the memory of the greenroom slammed into Cody’s mind. Alcoholic. Hangover. The words burned anger through him, spun vile insults for him to fight back with, as though they were still in that green room, Cody’s response still unsaid. He took a deep breath; he didn’t want to bring it up now, after so much normalcy had passed in the hours since. But the memory left a weird sensation spinning in his stomach, and before he knew it, he was saying, “Man, I can't wait for you to produce, direct, edit and star in the music video for this.”

Noel's eyebrows flexed as he thought. His mouth drew into a dry smirk. “You make it sound like you can't, or like I'm preventing you.”

Cody didn't say the word but it seemed to read right across his expression: yeah.

Noel snorted, shaking his head. "Dude, really? Come on. Come on."

Cody felt panic and was about to start retracting his words and tone when he realized that he didn’t want to. He had meant what he had said, and he wasn’t finished: “I don't know. I feel like you just do it, all that stuff. You just assume I don't want to be a part of it. And you're great, man, you're great at all of that stuff. I'm not saying you're bad at it or whatever. I'm just saying that... I don't know... I'm saying maybe I want to do that stuff too. Maybe I feel like you're keeping me away from it; like you're pushing me out.”

Noel rubbed his face with one hand and used his other to hold himself against the couch. “Cody,” his voice was even, “we make these choices together, don't we? It was always my assumption, my belief that you would tell me if you didn't like something I was doing or if you felt you had a better idea. Why am I…” Noel’s voice trailed off, clearly lost in a thousand diverging thoughts.

“No, no,” Cody started trying to reestablish his standpoint, “I'm only trying to say to you right now that in the future I would like to try and do these things that, for the most part, have only been in your hands, and I don't know... I want to do them too, okay? Is that too much to ask?” 

When Noel didn’t answer after a few seconds, Cody said, “Listen, we can talk about this another time. Or not at all. I’m sorry I brought it up so out of the blue like that. Let’s just finish this song--”

“I'm sorry, I can't,” Noel interrupted. “I can't just not talk about this,” Noel said. “I don't get it. I don't like that you've had these feelings, these unspoken feelings that sound pretty negative towards me, and you just haven’t brought them up until now? I want to know why. Can you please tell me why? We're supposed to be honest with each other, right? Isn't that fair?”

“Look, man,” Cody said, “It's not that deep. I'm a bad communicator. Sometimes it's not anything else but that, I swear.”

Noel shook his head. “No, man, that's bullshit. Okay? We've had so many uncomfortable conversations. This… this isn't the same thing. I can feel you're not telling me something. This is different for some reason and I want to know why. I don't like that you're not telling me something. Please. Just tell me, please.”

Cody, feeling the heat boiling in his face, wanting to disappear, took a deep breath, barely feeling it enter his lungs, and tried his best to say what his instincts warned him would be far more complicated to say, far more potentially detrimental.

“I guess I didn't say anything before because I thought you would... I thought you wouldn't understand, or that you would shoot me down and just be a... control freak. Because sometimes you are one. Am I wrong?”

Noel's heart started to beat much faster. The words, the insult, threw his mind and body back to the moment in the green room just hours prior; he had not expected Cody to bring up how hard it had been for him to quit smoking. Then again, if he took the time to consider what he had said about Cody’s alcohol use, maybe he would see that it wasn’t so unexpected of a response; but Noel didn’t have the time or mind in that moment to thoughtfully consider anything.

Noel turned to face Cody, his eyes unable to fix anywhere permanently, his thoughts racing. “Do you even like anything I've done? Have you just been letting me do these things and not actually liking them? and would you just let me take everything to the ground and crash and burn because you're too scared to fucking speak your mind? Are you too scared to fucking speak your mind to me? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Whoa, dude,” Cody said, unable to hold the words in. Noel was not calm anymore. There was no veneer of normalcy to this conversation. Cody didn't even think the word conversation was fitting at that point. This was a fight, and it wasn't going to be a little one; he could just feel it. It sparked fear inside of him, and very quickly anger swooped in and embattled him against it. Against Noel.

“Nothing is fucking wrong with me,” Cody spat. “All I wanted to do was talk about creative control. That's it.”

“No, that’s not it at all.” Noel stood up and walked away to the far end of the room, made sure the door was shut, and turned back around. “You know what it is Cody? You know why you never told me you felt pushed to the side? Because I think I do. I think I know why and I don't like it.” Cody, vexed and unmoving, could only weather the storm of Noel’s words. “You give me these roles, these jobs; you allow me to do these things... You know why? It's because you know that you have so much more than me. You always have. More followers, more views, more likes; not that any of that fucking matters. But that's just one way to put it.”

Cody, realizing it was his turn to speak, let out his words in a sorrowful rush, “I can't believe you're talking about me like this. I can't believe you're talking about us like this. What are you saying? This doesn't make any sense. I don't feel this way. I've never felt like I'm better than you. I don't know where you get that, Noel. I've never wanted that to be true. I've always wanted this to be us. Both of us, doing it together, as partners, as equals. If I ever gave you the impression that I didn't think you were as important or as good as me or whatever, I didn't intend to; I didn't mean to; I never would ever want that.”

Noel heard what Cody had said, and wanted to respond to it directly, but more and more hurtful things kept lining up at his lips. “You've just had so much your whole fucking life. You had good parents. You had a good childhood. When did you ever have to worry about anything? You never had to be the adult before you were an adult. You just got to live your fucking life, and then I come in, and I'm your friend, and you see me, you see me standing there below you and you take pity on me.”

Cody was completely shocked. Noel’s words felt like a bath of acid, wasting him away. He wanted to say something, anything, but no words made it to his vocal cords; in fact, they felt tangled, insurmountably so. He could do nothing but sit there, frozen, reeling internally.

"You gonna say anything, or?" Noel knew Cody was struggling to speak and reveled in it. He sat down on the far end of the couch, trying to breathe.

"You wanna hear my voice?" Cody heard the raggedness of his words as they left his lips and that in and of itself almost ignited tears. He tried holding his breath, as if that would hold them back.

Noel looked off in the space ahead of him, just as still in his body as Cody, also lost in thought. "Up to you." Noel could already feel himself losing. The adrenaline was ebbing, his hot head crashing; soon enough the roiling metal shield he'd been able to stand behind would be non-existent, and there he would stand, vulnerable and helpless, as guilty as he might ever feel over anything in his whole goddamn life.

"I know," Cody started, forcing his voice out, "that I haven't been through half the shit you have. I know that. I'll never forget that. I know I'm so fucking lucky to have the parents I have, had the childhood I had, had everything I've ever had. I know. I know, Noel." His voice started to break so he stopped to breathe. "I don't know and I can't know how that feels, but that doesn't mean I haven't felt terrible or I haven't had panic attacks or I haven't wanted to fucking die. That's not just you, man."

Noel’s face suddenly blew open into a crazed grin, "Oh, right, right! Now that you've had a few panic attacks, you're the expert on going through it.”

“Fuck you, man,” Cody felt the first tear and then the next one slide down his cheeks.

"Oh, Cody. You're gonna cry now?" Noel’s tone dripped with condescension. Cody had cried in front of Noel before and Noel knew what it looked like, he knew what it sounded like, he knew what it was like for Cody to cry. He knew how his heart had broken for Cody before in moments like these, and despite his extraordinary desire to only want to hate Cody and feel satisfaction in his pain, Noel couldn't ignore the cracks forming in his heart. A voice inside Noel's head said, Stop, go to him. Tell him you're sorry. This doesn't need to be the end. You can fix this. It's okay. You still love each other. But Noel was sick with anger, with shame. It put everything at a wrong angle, gave everything a false hue, made it infinitely easier to refrain from empathy, to feel nothing but disgust for his breaking friend.

Cody breathed in deeply, trying to overcome the way his throat was thickening.

“No yeah,” Noel continued, “let's stop talking. Let's let you calm down, take a break from the stresses of life, I'll go get you a blanket and some tea. You should just lie down you poor, poor thing."

"Shut the fuck up." Cody could hardly see through the tears and he shut his eyes tightly.

"Why should I?" Noel countered.

"You're being a goddamn asshole." Noel watched as Cody started to sit up straighter, finally able to look him dead in the eyes. “I'm a human being just like you. I'm your friend. I love you. You love me. I'm sorry I didn't tell you what I was really feeling before. But I will from now on, okay? I will.”

Noel didn’t look convinced. He was swimming in his own toxic blend of shame and adrenaline.

Cody went on, “I get being upset with me, but all of this shit you’re bringing up outside of the creative control thing… How long have you felt this way? You know what,” Cody raised his hand out to Noel, “you’ve been keeping all of that from me. We’ve both been hiding shit.”

Noel didn't know what to say. The silence gave the room a bitter taste. He didn't want to apologize. He didn't want to run away. He didn't want to keep fighting. He felt completely stuck where he sat. But then the bus came to a halt, and they both realized that they were stopping at a gas station. It was around 11:50 p.m. Not knowing how else to escape, Noel said, "I gotta piss."

He left the room; left Cody sitting there, staring after him; left his rage still singeing in the air.

He felt emptier when he stepped out into the cool, almost midnight air. He walked along the side of the road, the fluorescence from the gas station lighting made him squint. 

The air was brisk, and he felt his body closing in against itself, trying to conserve warmth. He was shaking, but not from cold, at least not the kind that could be measured in degrees. He went around the gas station building to find the bathroom door and seeing that it looked disgusting inside, he decided to piss in the bushes instead.

It was the strangest feeling: as soon as the stream started it was like Noel's body decided that all fluids had to come out. His eyes started to well up with tears, and soon enough, he was crying. He was able to hold it together long enough so that he didn't get piss all over his sweatpants, but as soon as he was done, he stumbled backward and sat down on the least dirty spot of ground he could find. He crumpled forward against his thighs, hugging his knees to his face, and cried. It was the kind of cry that hurt coming out, that he knew would leave a roughness in his voice. He didn't think he'd ever cried that hard, or if he had, it was when he was much younger, with far less life experience to warrant such a cry.

This felt like true loss was right around the corner. Like if he didn't do something soon, he would lose everything.

Noel was the kind of person who didn't cry very often because he felt too much. If he cried whenever he felt like crying, he wouldn't have many dry days. His whole life he had used humor to cope with his intense emotions, to deal with the hardships, and usually that worked for him; it was probably the best thing he'd ever figured out how to do, given that it was his entire career now to a certain extent. But he knew that if he spent his whole life hiding behind humor, he would never really feel better. He wished he could deal with his shit more effectively, more healthily; he wished he could just input a code into his brain that knew exactly how to manage being fucked up. But that didn't exist. And so that night, he cried.

He knew that they would wonder why he'd been gone for so long. So he wiped his eyes on the sleeves of his sweatshirt, got up, shook himself off, and tried to muster a sense of resolve. He made his way back to the bus, under the fluorescent lights, then the night sky. The driver was waiting outside, smoking a cigarette. Noel gave him a fist bump as he passed. 

It dawned on him as soon as he heard the bus door shut behind him: he didn't know where Cody was. He didn't know what Cody would be doing or thinking when he came back. 

Again, his churning feelings pricked the inner corners of his eyes and he sniffled. Noticing that Cody was not in his bunk, he figured that he was still in the back of the bus. He asked Matt if this was the case, who answered yes, and Noel made his way back there. It occurred to him as he approached the door that he hadn't looked to see what Matt's face told him, to check if Matt seemed to know what was going on. He cared somewhat about what Matt and Tom thought, but that was hardly as important to him as what Cody was doing at that moment, what Cody was thinking.

Angling his eyes downward, Noel slowly opened the door to the backroom. He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. He was scared to turn around. He was scared to face Cody. He knew how hurt he must have made him and he knew that this was not going to be an easy thing for them to overcome. And as much as that bothered Noel, it also made entirely too much sense.

He was scared to speak first, so he was glad that Cody took the initiative. "Hey," he said, and Noel looked up. In his nightmarish mind he'd seen eyes burning with hatred for him, he'd seen what he believed he deserved which was complete and utter enmity. But when he saw Cody's eyes in reality, they were clear and they were searching and they weren't hateful at all. They looked like they wanted to tell him something, and that this something was nothing to be scared of.

Noel broke, the sob coming through his throat. It wasn't a manly thing: to crawl, to plead, to beg; he knew that, and yet that was the only thing he felt like doing. It didn't matter to him anymore what he might look like; all he wanted was to know that Cody didn't hate him. He wanted him to say it. He wanted Cody to tell him that it was fine, that everything would be fine. On the other hand, he also felt like he deserved to be hated, he deserved to never have Cody's trust or love, to be told that nothing would be fine.

Ambling forward, Noel found the spot on the couch next to Cody and sat down, hiding his face in his palms. He felt a hand on his upper back and he started shaking his head. 

There were too many things that he wanted to say: _Say you don't have to like me anymore. You don't have to work with me ever again. If you never forgive me, I understand._ His mind and heart were racing, and all he could do in that moment was shake and cry and wait for Cody to do something.

It was a few minutes like that, with Noel crying and Cody rubbing his back. Everything was softer, quieter, darker, as they drove through the night.

Eventually, Noel couldn't take the silence, and he said, “Please just say something. Anything. Please.” Upon hearing that, Cody's hand stopped moving and he leaned over, draping himself over Noel's back in a half-hug.

After a moment of silent thinking, Cody said, voice low and regular, “Something… anything… please,” and laughed; and Noel, despite his best efforts, laughed too.

Noel said, “I'm really sorry dude. I'm really sorry that I said all that shit. I shouldn't have let it all out all at once... I don't know what came over me. I don't know what to do now. I don't know what to do.”

“I don't either,” Cody said frowning and smiling a little.

“Don't you hate me now?” Noel asked.

“Hate you? Are you crazy? Are you fucking stupid? What the fuck is wrong with you? Hate you? I don't hate you. What the hell?”

“God, you're supposed to say you fucking hate me," Noel groaned into his hands. "You really should hate me. Oh my God.”

“Okay, fine. I hate you, Noel Miller. There, happy?”

“No, not at all.” They both broke into laughter. “Oh, God…" Noel murmured to himself. "What the fuck?”

Cody sighed deeply. “I mean, that wasn't the best way to go about telling me that stuff, but at least it's out there now, right? Now we can have more constructive conversations about these things in the future.”

Noel sniffed, sitting up and rubbing his eyes, still scared to meet Cody's given how doing so before had affected him.

“Yeah, you're right.” Noel nodded. “Damn, good thing you grew up with parents who never fought like mine. You never learned that the best way to end an argument is to not end it."

“Fucking stupid that they put you through that," Cody said, voice tense. "I wish I could go back in time and save you from them, you know? Just take you out of that house.”

“Me too, man. Me too.”

“We should go to bed soon. Got a show tomorrow.”

“Yeah, you're right," Noel agreed.

“And we'll talk about this. Okay? Even if it's not tomorrow, even if it's not until after tour, or whatever. We'll talk about it. Everything.”

“I don't hate you,” Noel said. “I love you.”

Cody was surprised by the warmth and sheer gratitude in Noel's voice. He was still shaken up from their fight but he was nonetheless able to feel his whole body alight with warmth and relief at Noel's words.

“Love you, too,” Cody said, and he pulled Noel into a full hug which Noel very much reciprocated. They patted each other on their backs.

Noel sighed against Cody's shoulder. “Thanks, man,” he said.

“Always dude,” Cody replied.


End file.
